


Last of Our Kind

by KatsukiSin



Category: Supernatural, The Book Thief - Markus Zusak
Genre: Cas thinks Earth is beautiful, Castiel Has Secrets (Supernatural), Crossover, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Death is a sweetie, Gen, Guilty Castiel (Supernatural), No idea how to tag this guys, Secrets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:21:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26358628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KatsukiSin/pseuds/KatsukiSin
Summary: Castiel meets up with an old friend, intending to say something that should have been said long ago. Things don't go quite as he expected them to.ORCas explains why Death is the only reaper guiding souls.
Relationships: Castiel & Death, Castiel (Supernatural) & Death (The Book Thief)
Kudos: 7





	Last of Our Kind

At first, Castiel was alone on the bench. It was a long time before anyone sat beside him, but it didn’t matter, considering neither of them were really there.

No, that wasn’t strictly true. The pair existed at the bench, yes, but not in a molecular sense. They were not in the Earthly plane of existence, and as a result, they could not interact with what was there. Not with the air, not with the bench (which is why describing them as “sitting on” it is fairly ambiguous), and certainly not with the inhabitants. The humans had such dulled senses. Although it may be worth noting that animals didn’t have nearly as much trouble seeing into the Ethereal plane. On days when the stars aligned and the Earth’s song harmonized, children didn’t have as much trouble, either.

This wasn’t one of those days, though.

The two companions sat silently for a long time. They looked at the sky, with its multitude of blues that kept shifting and fading with every passing second, bleeding into a white-washed horizon along with the trees. They watched the grass- that shimmering sea of green, light and dark and every hue in between- as it lay before them. Castiel watched the light glinting off the bronze playground equipment, which would have been very bright to mortal eyes but dimmed in comparison to his own Grace and Essence. The man next to him watched the way the sun played with the screaming and laughing and crying children’s hair; he watched blonde hair spun gold and brown hair turned copper, saw the shadows dance among the twisted strands and locks. The other man had always lost himself among the colours, but lately, he caught his thoughts circling back to the mortals more and more.

The other man didn’t feel a particular need to talk, but he understood that there was something to be said, and that Castiel would not do it on his own.

“It surprised me.”

Castiel knew what the keeper of death was referring to immediately. Over the few thousand years the two had known each other, their meetings had been few and far between, produced only by the coincidence of being in the same place at the same time. They had grown fond of each other over time but had never made arrangements or appointed times to meet. Until now.

The angel wondered why the other had agreed to come. It certainly hadn’t been out of politeness or fondness. The reaper was pleasant, warm, and even comforting, but he could never be described as polite or kind. In his line of work, he didn’t have the option to be nice, and Castiel himself had seen the way being kind and hopeful tended to backfire. “It needed to be done,” Cas said eventually.

“Why?”

Castiel paused a while, piecing together his response. The two were speaking in clipped sentences, but it wasn’t for want of time; they were immortals, after all, and had all eternity to pass by. The other man simply found himself rarely speaking, and it felt natural to Castiel to imitate the other’s speech patterns. “Sea green and white. A cold sun seen from far under the waves, with dark blue closing in, threatening to turn empty black. Combined with a dark sky, obscured by scorched clouds and silhouettes, contrasting an ashen moon and face.”

Seeing death face-to-face is an experience guaranteed to change the best of us. In Castiel’s case, that manifested in two ways. First, the soldier had made a friend as weary as himself, and with similar views on the beauty of the fragile humans and their planet. Second, he had learned a new language born of colours and experiences that only the two of them shared. Roughly translated, Castiel’s response can be thought of as follows: “I’m doing this out of kindness. As well as a need to atone.”

The reaper watched Castiel closely. Cas tried to meet the other’s gaze, but this reaper was different. Any attempt to look directly at him made Castiel’s eyes slide off the other like water off a duck’s oily feathers. It was like some subconscious part of him refused to let the reaper be truly noticed. Indeed, Castiel had no way to describe the man next to him. Even if Cas had tried to describe his friend’s eyes, the shade of his hair, the shape of the particles and wavelengths which created his true form, the posture with which he held himself, or any other thing about him, it would have been impossible.

He didn’t even have a name for the being beside him.

“What kindness could you have to offer me?”

“The equivocal type of kindness,” Cas said slowly. “The truth. An unfair truth, but still reality.”

“What truth do I not know?” The reaper asked with doubt. Castiel could hardly blame him for that. When you lived long enough, eventually everything began to blend together, and it was hard to remember there was more to the universe than the monotonous blend of what you knew of and what you had done to the world.

Castiel couldn’t help but hesitate before answering. The reaper was currently miserable, and there was a chance this information could help, but there was also a guarantee it would make things worse before they could get better, if it helped at all.

In the end, he had to say it.

“You can take a vacation.”

When the reaper did not react, Castiel added: “You’re not the only one who can lead souls. You’re not alone, and-- and I don’t understand why you’re not responding to me.”

“Why would you say this?” The reaper's voice was unperturbed, bafflingly enough. No rage, shock, or betrayal tinted his voice.

Cas kept his gaze trained firmly away from the reaper as he confessed. “It was a joke,” he said quietly. “Not of my creation or will, but I… I knew about it. And I kept the truth to myself, away from you.

“A million years ago, two species had an idea. An idea for an experiment. How would a reaper act if it thought it was all alone, stealing human lives and forced to see the consequences of its actions on Earth? Would the reaper turn cruel? Or insane? Would the reaper choose to die, rather than carry such a lonely burden?

“The reapers and the angels, the two Elder species, decided to pick a reaper and reprogram it. Wipe its memory of the rest of its species, prevent it from being able to see, and recognize the duty of, its fellow reapers. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. But that reaper is you.”

Now of all times, Castiel had expected rage, hatred, disdain, despair. What he did not expect was for the reaper to gently say, “I know.”

Cas furrowed his brow, staring intensely down at the grass since looking at the reaper never quite worked. “What do you mean? How can you know?”

The other being made a sound like a sigh. “Billions of people. Millions die every second. I could never guide them all, especially not with time to spare. This time to spare.”

“But, for thousands of years-- for all of those trillions upon trillion of colour changes-- you’ve never once taken a break in the knowledge that you are not alone. Why?”

There was another question that Cas wanted to ask. How? He didn’t. Part of him didn’t think he could handle the answer.

“Because you’re wrong.” The reaper turned to the angel. “My siblings made a choice that I never would have made. They act in ways in which I never will. That is what sets me apart from them. Perhaps we are the same species, but we were never the same kind, and that is why I am alone. I like to think the mortals need my kind, my warmth, my guidance. That thinking is why I stay. Why I… try to stay.”

“I don’t know what to say to that,” Castiel admitted, hands clasped tightly together.

“Then don’t say anything,” The reaper responded, and Castiel thought he heard traces of amusement in the voice.

There was silence for a few moments until Castiel broke it.

“I’m sorry,” he finally said. “I should have told you long ago.”

The reaper responded without missing a beat. “I understand why you didn’t.”

“Do you?”

“Fear,” The reaper said smoothly. “If angels and death-bringers are capable of this, what punishments or experiments might they invent for you had you ruined their experiment by telling me? And if I knew I was not alone, what reason would I have to meet with you?

“The first fear is rational enough, but you needn’t worry about the second one. We are both the first and last of our kind, Castiel.”

The words sent shivers down Castiel’s spine. “Then I suppose we’ll always be drawn to each other.”

The reaper stayed silent, and the two non-corporeal beings watched as the sun’s multi-coloured rays broke apart in the ether.


End file.
